Search - Joan Baez :: Country Music Album

Mixedbag over 20 years of recording

Tony Thomas | SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA | 06/23/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a mixed bag. The last 5 recordings come from the days of Joanie being the folk artist, doing traditional songs, some with the great Green Briar Boys like Ohio and Pal of Mine from her very first album in 1960, 44 years ago! Others are from the first two folk albums where Joanie actually became one of the better Carter family pickers around like little Moses, Engine 143, and my favorite, Gospel Ship, all out the Carter Family repertoire. Even on these songs Joanie really doesn't sing them as we who sing traditional, old time, or country sing them, but with her hard core note perfect world class soprano, and a tendency to melodramaticize things that are not Melodramic. I remember getting that 1960 albuym and discovering someone died in every single song! Later, Vanguard the company she was with in the 1960s and 1970s tried to take all their artists in a country direction recording them in Nashville with some of the best studio musicians, not just old Joanie, but Buffey Saint Marie, Eric Anderson, and Doc Watson. Some of the best stuff on this CD for the general non Carter family or bluegrass fanatic comes from this period: the heart wrenching Hickory Wind and the equally great Rock Salt and Nails. Here the limitations of Joanie's vocal approach highly the stark, but sentimental lyrics of great songs, and really touch you. I sighed and stepped back just thinking of those two titles, even though I have been listening to them since the early 1970s. No one should be denied the experience of hearing them. Curiously missing is Joan's best Nashville Album. This is what we used to call "The White Album" because it was a two volume white looking record looking surprisingly like the Beatles 1968 white Album, of Bob Dylan songs. It was recorded in Nashville. There is some great work on that album on fiddling and fiddling with sol fagio by the GREAT JOHNNY GIMBLE, and some really great arrangements of the Dylan songs by whoever was producing Vanguard's Nashville sessions. Except for the two cuts with the Greenbriars, there is nothing on here that I would think of sounding really country, particularly in Joanie's voice. She tries but she is into something of her own which one either likes or dislikes. A lot of the Nashville arrangements are artful and interesting. This is for fans of Joan Baez or fans of some of the songs.
For Country get a country artist."